Not really, gunnery is arguably better at pvp now then assault due to the massive load of defensives that it got. Assault has some nice damage and dot spreading but its burst is still nothing to write home about and its survival actually got worse since they lost their short CD shield. Gunny on the other hand has better cc immunity (advance the line), the ability to ignore smashers (decoy), stronger electronet (6%, not much but something), double does of tech overrides on a shorter cooldown, faster shield regen, longer shield duration, random chance to proc a 1k shield when hit. Mobility is really not a concern anymore since advance the line has such a short cooldown and is such an awesome cooldown. Strockstrike root, advance the line, net, and then unload on the poor sucker, I can't wait to hear the smashers crying for net nerfs.

Hold the Line gives immunity from movement-impairing effects, according to the tooltip. Does it also block interrupts (Mind Snap, Distraction, etc)?

No, hold the line prevents slows and stuns only, you can still get interrupted. But you can bait the interrupt with a non procced full auto or charged bolts. You then have 8-9s of unstoppable dps. After that you can net + punt and continue doing more of the same.

 

Also, thank you for the gearing advice, did another quick parse a bit ago and hit 1860 dps. Still nothing special but its climbing. Any other advice?

 

http://www.torparse.com/a/149907

 

Also: Alacrity is not that bad as far as ammo use goes. I have tried running with 13% alacrity (up to 16% on crits), and I had no real ammo issues. I had to watch my ammo carefully, but I never ran into a situation where I was running out and didn't have a fresh clip ready. That said, I had to give up a ton of power, surge, and crit for that so its not an ideal build by any means.

Edited March 1, 2013 by wishihadaname

Gunnery has mostly cast-time and channeled abilities that can be interrupted and requires a lot of standing still.

 

Assault has mostly instant cast abilities that can be done on the move.

 

I think it's fair to describe one as PvE-friendly and the other as PvP-friendly.

 

assault needs charged bolts just as much as gunnery need grav round

Reason Terminal Velocity / Cell charger needs to be improved. 10 every 6 secs for example.

 

And instead of 10% alacrity of cell charger/improved vents, lower its cooldown.

Edited March 2, 2013 by DarkForster

assault needs charged bolts just as much as gunnery need grav round

 

But ironically assault has 0 pushback resistance.

 

The bottom of Gunnery is required for Assault to work which is a horrible double cost on talent points.

 

Extremely annoying when you realise how many PVP talents you must take in Assault (whether you want to PVP or not) to get up to the top of the tree and still don't have the tools you need.

Edited March 2, 2013 by Gyronamics

http://www.torparse.com/a/150750

 

2451

 

My best parse so far, also well geared and competent commando.

 

Full 69 modded

Full augments (22), 5 Overkill, rest Reflex.

2 WH power relics

All aim Datacrons, and the +10

All companions maxed

All class buffs

Rakata Reflex Stim

Rakata Power Adrenal, used on CD

Parsed on the lvl 55 ship dummy, no lag, no gcd bugs, perfect conditions.

 

5/36/5

 

Aim: 2780

Power: 1535

Accuracy: 360 99.06%

Crit: 0 21.02%

Surge: 360 70.06%

Alacrity: 0

 

I had no ammo issues at all, I hovered in the middle for maybe 20 seconds somewhere in the middle, had a run where FA did not want to proc. But all in all I feel it was a good clean parse, no errors on my part and no lag.

Edited March 2, 2013 by WNxJokazWild

No, hold the line prevents slows and stuns only, you can still get interrupted. But you can bait the interrupt with a non procced full auto or charged bolts. You then have 8-9s of unstoppable dps. After that you can net + punt and continue doing more of the same.

 

Also, thank you for the gearing advice, did another quick parse a bit ago and hit 1860 dps. Still nothing special but its climbing. Any other advice?

 

http://www.torparse.com/a/149907

 

Also: Alacrity is not that bad as far as ammo use goes. I have tried running with 13% alacrity (up to 16% on crits), and I had no real ammo issues. I had to watch my ammo carefully, but I never ran into a situation where I was running out and didn't have a fresh clip ready. That said, I had to give up a ton of power, surge, and crit for that so its not an ideal build by any means.

 

Just an FYI, hold the line does NOT prevent stuns. It prevents movement impairing effects such as slows as you pointed out, immoblizations and knockbacks. Stuns, interrupts and mezzes still apply.

Edited March 2, 2013 by Mercury_Down

But ironically assault has 0 pushback resistance.

 

The bottom of Gunnery is required for Assault to work which is a horrible double cost on talent points.

 

Extremely annoying when you realise how many PVP talents you must take in Assault (whether you want to PVP or not) to get up to the top of the tree and still don't have the tools you need.

 

yeah i'm glad they moved steadied aim down to tier 1 and made charged barrier obtainable, but there's still a lot of talents leftover i'd rather like to take, and now that special munitions is a 3-point talent, it doesn't seem like it's any better now thatt muzzle flutting was removed.

 

although in a weird way, since the 2% ranged crit for assault seems like a laughable talent to take, maybe that's the tradeoff: better off taking field training anyway.

 

 

and they made assault plastique less desirable too by giving charged bolts a 30% crit multiplier with assault trooper now, hyper barrels doesn't boost AP damage like the VG equivalent... other than being an on-the-move attack that does about 8% more damage (factoring in charged bolt's +21% damage on burning targets), it still provides no synergy with the class with resetting HIB or having any chance to trigger plasma cell.

 

 

 

i was trying out something like 6/7/33 and never saw first responder fall off while i was actively attacking the dummy. granted i wasn't watching it the whole time, but it seems like you only need 1 point for it even with the changes to crit

Edited March 2, 2013 by oaceen

I wanted to make a comment after looking through some of the Gunnery parses as I work through bring my own dps on the PTS up. Some of these may have been already covered, so I hope I'm not being redundant, but here were some things that stood out to me:

 

1. Since I pre-queue up my next ability, I used to fire a CoF FA one turn late. Like this: GR -> GR -> CoF -> GR -> FA. I would have already queued up the next GR, so I see the proc while my queued GR goes off and then I fire FA.

 

Some of the good parses pick up the FA a lot sooner. I think it was oaceeen that commented on this that he queues up the next FA before the proc, just in case, but hits a GR immediately following the current GR. Done properly, it won't interrupt a CoF FA, but will fire another GR without delay.

 

Incidentally, I started practicing that on live as well, it really helped a lot. BUT, until I got used to it, it really mucked up my ammo regen. I think this is largely due to the fact that I was making a change in my rotation, and I just needed to get comfortable with it. But this brings

 

2. Ammo regen. With the free HiB on live I've gotten used to using HS infrequently. On a short fight (e.g. Infernal Council) I can do the entire thing without hitting HS once. But on PTS, HS is needed more frequently. However, the higher parses were using HS more often than I was on my lower parse.

 

This surprised me at first, but then it made sense when I started firing the FA quicker -- a more liberal use of HS kept me out of the danger zone so I could always use a CoF FA instantly.

 

Anyway, I'm still working through the 2.0 changes and I'm getting better, but I wanted to bring up these two points, in case they help others get closer to where they want to be.

Edited March 8, 2013 by Khevar

Some of the good parses pick up the FA a lot sooner. I think it was oaceeen that commented on this that he queues up the next FA before the proc, just in case, but hits a GR immediately following the current GR. Done properly, it won't interrupt a CoF FA, but will fire another GR without delay.

 

i don't believe that was me. i do try to do that at times, but here is my general philosophy regarding it.

 

after all the regular skills are used and off CD, i'm floating somewhere between 8 and 12 ammo (whatever that is in cells). i generally do GR > GR > HS > FA

i doesn't matter if CoF triggered after the first or second FA, i usually don't have enough ammo anyway to use FA without dipping into low regen. usually it procs with one of the two.

 

i sometimes queue up FA during a GR cast (anticipating CoF), but it causes me to bug a lot and get a full GCD where i'm locked out of doing anything, so i don't do it that often anymore.

usually when i queue up FA it's because i'm close to full ammo at the end of GR cast and FA is almost off CD (so it doesn't matter either way if CoF procs). this puts me at 8 ammo (or whatever that is in heat) at the beginning of FA channel, and if CoF procs, extra damage. if it doesn't, i can start trying for it immediately after.

 

 

really though, i don't think it matters. the CoF buff is 15s i believe, and you have 2 GCDs + the FA (plus a little more considering alacrity speeds all of that up) before you can reset it again anyway, so if you GR [CoF] > GR > FA, you still have to spend one more GCD before you can reset it anyway.

I would like some clarification / feedback regarding alacrity. Some here have claimed that boosting alacrity would cause unwanted ammo regen issues, but the patch notes suggest otherwise:

 

Alacrity has been redesigned to be a more universally useful stat. Now Alacrity reduces the activation time of all abilities, including instant abilities. If such an ability is reduced below the global cooldown, the global cooldown is reduced as well. Alacrity now also increases resource regeneration for all classes by the same amount that it increases ability activation speed.

 

That said, it seems like alacrity could be very helpful to gunnery commandos reliant on channeled abilities. The best reason to avoid it would be the opportunity cost of having less crit, surge, or power to take alacrity. I'm not smart enough to do the math on which distribution is ideal, but again, if it does indeed increase ammo regen proportionally to the cooldown reduction, it's worth consideration.

I would like some clarification / feedback regarding alacrity. Some here have claimed that boosting alacrity would cause unwanted ammo regen issues, but the patch notes suggest otherwise:

 

 

 

That said, it seems like alacrity could be very helpful to gunnery commandos reliant on channeled abilities. The best reason to avoid it would be the opportunity cost of having less crit, surge, or power to take alacrity. I'm not smart enough to do the math on which distribution is ideal, but again, if it does indeed increase ammo regen proportionally to the cooldown reduction, it's worth consideration.

 

The main issue is that it doesn't affect the internal cooldown of cell charger. I still think it's probably going to be worth taking some, if not from your gear then the skills. The specifics are still pretty unclear though.